Ticket Gouging & Probation

Ticket torment, Georgia probation systems ensnares those too poor to pay traffic fines Posted: 12:00 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 22, 2014, By Carrie Teegardin - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Vera Cheeks, of Bainbridge, received a $135 ticket for rolling through a stop sign. Going on probation gave her time to pay, but money was so tight that she was unable to make an immediate payment of $50. Her fiancé resorted to pawning Cheeks’ engagement ring and a Weed Eater so she could leave the building. “It just broke my heart,” Cheeks said. MARK WALLHEISER / Special for the AJC

Vera Cheeks was hoping for mercy when she appeared in court for rolling through a stop sign. What she got was probation: Georgia’s high-cost solution for people who can’t immediately pay a traffic fine.  “I’m thinking, for a ticket – I’m on probation?” Cheeks said. “What the heck happened?”

Probation in most states is reserved for shoplifters, drunk drivers and felons who need community supervision instead of lock-up. In Georgia, probation handles those kinds of cases. But probation in the Peach State has also become a massive system for collecting money from people who can’t afford to pay off traffic tickets and other misdemeanor fines on the day they go to court.

This unique – and often lucrative – use of community supervision has turned Georgia into the nation’s probation kingpin. More than 500,000 Georgians were on probation in 2013, according to a new federal report. That’s far more in sheer numbers than any other state and represents a probation rate that is more than quadruple the national average.

Georgia is the national leader in probations with a probation rate of 6829 per 100,000 people.  The Next is Ohio with 2802 per 100,000 people.   The US average probation rate is 1605 per 100,000 people.

 

An investigation of probation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that waitresses, teachers, construction workers, mothers and children, and people who haven’t worked in months stream into probation offices across the state trying to pay off fines that can quickly double in cost once the probation system adds its slate of fees.

The probation officers in Georgia who handle most of the misdemeanor cases are employees of for-profit probation companies that state law authorizes local courts to hire. Poor Georgians on probation often claim they are threatened with jail if they get behind on payments, even though a U.S. Supreme Court decision doesn’t allow this kind of lock-up.

Vera Cheeks’ penalty for the stop-sign violation was a $135 fine. Going on probation gave her time to pay, but various fees upped the cost of her punishment to $267 over three months. Cheeks said her probation officer in a small town in South Georgia told her she would have to report in every week and make payments when due or face a warrant for her arrest.

Cheeks said she was ordered to make an immediate payment of $50, which she didn’t have. Her fiancé resorted to pawning Cheeks’ engagement ring and a Weed Eater so she could leave the building. “It just broke my heart,” Cheeks said. ‘A bad rap’

Source: Atlanta Journal

Comments

What was once a $75 ticket in the mail has turned into almost $300 with harassment.  Atlanta drivers who want to avoid these rolling stop tickets will need to come to a complete stop at every stop sign, day or night. Heaven forbid you go through a red light. 

Atlanta is changing. It used to be the city too busy to hate. It appears it will become the city too cautious to move.  Atlanta metro’s failure to expand the roads and highways to meet its larger population has kept drivers frantic to keep traffic moving. That could change. Drivers now have the incentive to adopt centenarian driving habits.  How long could those traffic jams become?

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader